


flip of a coin

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Face-Fucking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 07:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13922796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Nightwing kills Joker, he doesn’t stop there.





	flip of a coin

**Author's Note:**

> has this idea been done to death yet?? i actually have no idea but i like the thought that if any of the batfam killed, especially dick, they would still be inherently themselves and really not all that fucked up. 
> 
> Sort of spoilers but heads up for kind of underage face fucking given Jason is still robin.

 

Side A. _the rogue robin spreads his wings_

 

He thinks on it like it is a very bad joke.

An origin story of his own choosing that doesn’t start with his parents. Instead, tragedy starts with Robi— _Jason_ , accumulates with Barbara, and ends at Tim with a finality that is deafening.

Nightwing kills Joker, he doesn’t stop there.

 

Like a great deal of many things since his resurrection, Jason learns of this from Talia too.

She holds out the unsealed manila envelop to him like it is a peace offering. But Jason knows Talia like Talia knows him. She isn’t smiling but her eyes are like crescent moons, crinkled in the corners like she has her mouth curled into the widest grin.

“Looks like you have competition.”

Her eyes stay still on him, like she is waiting on a reaction.

He isn’t sure if this is what he likes about her, isn’t sure what it is about him that has her entertained for this long either. But he isn’t dead (again, _hah_ ), so he takes it from between her fingers like there is any room here for truce.

The photos that fall out from the mouth of the envelop gives him just enough to piece together a version of a truth she wants him to learn. Jason flicks through the photos, cataloguing the tells one by one. He looks at a skyline that is not unfamiliar even if it is not Gotham. He sees carnage that is personal in a way Jason’s kills are not. He glances up at her with some resemblance of calm even if he is fairly certain he is looking at Bruce’s golden boy with blood on his hands.

“Competition is not all bad, Talia.”

She smiles before leaving him to digest the rest of it on his own.

The pictures might be sharp and in focus but the motivation behind it or the series of events that led to this point are not, and he can tear apart the glossy finish and still find nothing close to an answer.

 

Dick Grayson loves Bludhaven for a very simple reason: It is not Gotham.

The city might have nothing going for her but she is _his_ in every way. There are no gargoyles but there are pigeon spikes as uninviting as they come, sharp pointed spikes sticking out along every concrete edge to prevent a perch. The baddies of the month rarely take a chance on Bludhaven where the cost outweighs the benefits. Gotham is not safe per say but its protector doesn’t kill even if the beating can be severe.

Nightwing makes a name for himself here where even the bad smell that hits have its benefits when it keeps leading the way to where the garbage lingers. If it is getting predictable, he isn’t about to complain that his work is made all the easier when he continues to find unsavory characters in the same damn place.

 

Choice is given, and Nightwing will give it every time.

He has a very simple rule here in his city: Let the punishment fit the crime.

 

The new player in town makes him itch with a nervous energy, the red a beacon that keeps pulling his eyes in.

“Hood.”

He sees him coming and if the confrontation is just a little bit brazen, well, Red Hood hasn’t been exactly subtle either with the stunts he keeps pulling.

“Your welcome is breaking my heart, ’Wing.”

Carried across the short distance between them, Dick hates the false familiarity he hears in this unfamiliar voice. It drags across his skin like a taunt, like he should _know_ who that is under the helmet.

He first hears about Red Hood in relation to Black Mask, the mess of crime syndicates that persist in Gotham’s underbelly, and the heads that rolled are a rather large splash that keeps the ripples moving all the way here. It takes very little digging to find the Red Hood that came before the Joker. He doesn’t need copycats, he needs villainy of Joker’s kind to end, and if he is the one to do it once then he can do it again.

Red Hood takes his silence to continue.

“How do you do it?”

He asks like he is casually continuing a conversation they have been having.

“Do what?”

“How do you kill and not end up on Batman’s naughty list?”

Red Hood tilts his head to the side, a blatant show of genuine curiosity that doesn’t need to be on display. Nightwing thinks about lying, he also thinks there is very little purpose for it when Hood is so obviously looking for a reaction. He doesn’t like this.

“I try not to step on Batman’s toes.”

There is a muffled noise that erupts, sounding like an echo of what could be a macabre laugh underneath the helmet. “Thanks for the advice but don’t be offended if I do the opposite. I’ve got plans to go stomp on some toes.”

He likes this less and less but he isn’t about to run away in his own town.

 “What brings you here to ‘haven?”

There is incredulity, there is also a little bit of worn affection in the incantation of his words. Red Hood crosses his arms and Nightwing sees nothing in the way this man carries himself that brings a spark of recognition.

“Are you really asking if I’m here for business or pleasure?”

“I don’t like to assume what the bad guys of the week do on their days off.” Nightwing says with a shrug, escrima sticks held loosely in both hands.

“You—” Red Hood stops himself, corrects himself, and Nightwing wants to hear the unfiltered version of the truth if just to catch some hint of the man under the hood. “You haven’t changed at all. You’re the exact same.”

Nightwing sees it coming and he can throw every punch he can muster but Red Hood doesn’t stop. He doesn’t want _this_ truth.

“Still the old Bats’ favorite. Still cleaning up messes that aren’t yours to clean.”

Dick really wishes he had ran. Red Hood is a menace.

 

Bruce has a no-kill rule because the man finds the line too easy to cross.

Dick knows it as the opposite. If it is easy, he would have made the choice long before every loss. But he didn’t. It is the hardest choice he makes. It is also one he continues to make. Joker’s blood is not the last of the red on his hands.

Nightwing turns his back on Batman. He leaves Gotham and he doesn’t go back.

He is not so foolish as to think he can outrun the Bat if he comes chasing. He is not at his mercy but he is glad for the extent of Bruce’s kindness.

 

When he enters his city, this time, he comes after him instead.

“I should know you.”

“It’s better you don’t.”

He chases him across rooftops until there is nowhere else to go. When Red Hood makes that last stretch back into the outskirts of Gotham, Nightwing stops himself from crossing that last line.

“He doesn’t put you in prison, so you put yourself in one instead.”

Nightwing wants to tell him he is wrong. _I know you_ , Dick doesn’t say in the aftermath of Red Hood’s next words.

“If it is any consolation, thank you.”

Red Hood turns and goes where Nightwing cannot follow.

 

 

 

 

Side B. _the return of robin 2.0_

 

Joker is dead and Batman’s hands are clean.

Choice is given, and choice can be taken. Nightwing makes the same one night after night, does exactly what he had planned to do before he even comes close to the right state of mind from the green of the Lazarus pit.

Red Hood watches, he doesn’t get a say.

 

While Nightwing can no longer step foot in Gotham, Red Hood knows he has enough connections to know exactly what goes on in Gotham. He is expecting him and there is a part of Red Hood where he is glad for that.

He finds him in the home of a bad man.

“I didn’t think I’d miss you.”

The only gun he has on him is still just his grappling gun. Nightwing prefers to kill with his hands because he still wears his heart on his sleeves and every death is personal. Dick doesn’t need the distance, and Jason has no idea how he feels about that.

“Well, _I_ missed you, Little Wing.”

Nightwing stands up, allows the body to drop, slump to a pile at his feet, neck bent at a very broken angle.

“I got big.”

“You don’t say, Jay.” Nightwing turns, smile on his face and even with the domino mask on, Red Hood knows just how the upturn of his mouth makes his eyes wane. “Wouldn’t have ever guessed you were the one behind the hood the first time I saw you.”

“Dying kind of keeps the mystery alive, Dickie.”

Nightwing huffs out a breath, like a morbid little laugh.

“Alive.” He says, coming to terms with it like Jason once did, coming to a very different conclusion that Jason once did too. “Let’s keep it that way.”

There is something to it, the way he reaches out a hand but stops himself before he makes contact. Red Hood looks at Nightwing’s blue tipped fingers and the taut stretch of black that encases the length of his arm.

Talia has a knack for giving Jason just what he wants even if it is no good. He remembers the staggering rush of relief that hits him when he learns of Joker’s death, then the trickling of anger that Bruce played no part in it except for not getting there in time to stop it. And isn’t that such a damn shame that maybe Batman can make room in the cave for Joker’s own suit next to his bloody Robin suit.

When Talia tells him who killed Joker though, disbelief is not what hits him first but awe. And Jason Todd hates how even in life after death this is what Dick Grayson inspires in him in place of anything else.

Jason takes that step forward, touches Dick’s fingertips to his chest, over the red of the bat insignia.

“Believe it or not, I’m not in any rush to die again.”

Another step and it is his palm across his heart.

 

He doesn’t think he can be fair at all when it comes down to just the two of them, long out of the Robin uniform and even the red and brown and blue and black of their suits now.

Jason looks like he wants to yell a whole lot of profanity while Dick steels himself for a fight. But Jason is quiet when he starts, “You’re torn up about not coming to my funeral?”

Dick looks at him, conviction twisting him all up inside. “I—”

“Make it up to me.”

Jason is asking without the words, Dick is earnest in making that choice, over and over again.

“With interest.”

He thinks back on their very short history together.

 

There is a saying, he thinks, that there is no risk of a secret getting out if one of them is dead.

He doesn’t open his mouth wide like he wants to, he parts it into a thin slit and stops.

Behind one of many closed doors in the manor, Robin is single-mindedly driven to get on his knees while Nightwing is very distractedly thinking how it isn’t supposed to go like this at all. He doesn’t lean into Dick’s hand across his cheek like he wants to, he doesn’t push for more when Dick’s thumb brushes his chin, his jaw, his top lip before stopping, a breath’s away from what he is asking for.

When Dick hooks his thumb into Jason’s mouth, Jason doesn’t allow himself to sigh into the hot press of Dick’s lips, briefly across his. It is sweet but Jason isn’t looking for _sweet_.

He tells him just that.

“If it is any consolation, I want it too.”

They are brothers, here, doing what brothers do not do.

When Dick slides his cock between his lips, he keeps his thumb tucked into the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t pull but Jason opens up all the same to accommodate him when he pushes in slow, the head of his cock dragging along the flat of Jason’s tongue and it feels like one long lingering touch when he finally bottoms out.

The sensation makes the soft gasps of _fuck_ and _Little Wing_ scatter down and over the crown of Jason’s head.

His hand finds his hair, Jason almost wishes he would pull. But Jason wishes for plenty of other things too like how each breath he pulls into his lungs through his nose would burn. Except it doesn’t. It settles so comfortably in his chest.

He can be quiet but he isn’t, and he thinks Dick likes that even if he thinks he shouldn’t.

Jason pulls off, a little bit, a lot. He has spit and pre-cum smeared across his mouth and chin, he looks like he is seconds from asking to have his face fucked completely and thoroughly without abandon. And there is a whole lot of guilty pleasure here for Dick.

“Come on, Nightwing.”

Jason takes Dick’s hands from his hair to settle them on each side of his head, looking up at him with the wrong kind of defiance, catching Dick’s half-lidded gaze and holding. Someone’s got to give. 

“ _Jay_.”

 

Green in his eyes, green dripping from him. Jason knows what hurts most and he is betting he can drive himself into madness first before anything else.

“Of course, even _this_ you’ve got to be the first.”

“Jealous?”

“Downright envious, Goldie.”

And if it drips with scorn, Jason is not above defending himself against the first boy wonder. He might also be betting how long it takes before Nightwing reaches that point where he comes to willingly. Steps away from all this and thinks what a mistake it all is. This isn’t _him_.

Except.

  _It is_ , Dick doesn’t say because regret doesn't come close to crossing his mind in the face of Jason's second attempt at life, _it is all me._

He continues that conversation they had, falls right back into it like the hood isn’t somewhere on the living room floor, like their domino masks aren’t at the side of the bed, like the blue and black skin of Nightwing isn’t pooling by the window sill because that is the first thing to come off.

“So, what is it?”

“What is what?”

There is a cloud of cigarette smoke and Dick hates it but the bad smell that settles in his hair and his sheets is comforting when he inevitably leaves for Gotham again.

“Business or pleasure, Jay?”

He looks at him and in life, he is still sharp and in focus.

“I like to think it can be a mix of both.”

He makes his choice, chooses _this_ at every given chance.

 


End file.
